Transpac – Race day 12 – Race mode!

We know! Cubaneren still holds the position of a champ. Last 24 hours was according to plan and we nailed another 20+ nautical miles on both the Cals. Azure is still aiming for Russia as far as we know, while Sequoia is limping behind in our trail. But guess what? That damn weather forecast is now showing a light wind area just in front of the Hawaiian Islands as we are aapproaching them – and Azure haven’t gybed yet – so the drama is definitely not over. Great conditions for the moment, but will it last?? For sure we could have gone to church more often before be left, but thats to late – so lets just hope the tradewinds appreciate Norwegian sailors trying to make history.

The routing says we have just 250ish miles to go – and hence we have activated race mode version 2.0 onboard. That means we will sail even faster and have better VMG according to our captain. Until now we have been doing shifts of 4 hours throughout the night – on two teams. We’ll give you an example: Thomas will go to bed before or just after dinner around 7 pm. Maren will do the same after finishing the dishwashing – typical task for the women. Then Karl Otto and Eirik will sail as hell into the missing sunsets, while typing this report and planning what prank to perform when awakening the other crew. As it gets darker, Karl Otto will be the helms man – as he is afraid of the dark and need to focus on something not to think about it too much, while Eirik will perform the agreed prank on Thomas to wake him up. Karl Otto will tell Thomas where we are heading tonight (typically Hawaii for the last 12 days) and head for the coffin to prank Maren and get to sleep. 4 hours later it all happens again, but please exchange the names. Eirik means Thomas, Thomas means Eirik, Karl Otto means Maren and so on. You get the point.

At about 10-11 am (a lot of you struggle with the am and pm part, so am means morning ok), we all meet to hopefully celebrate the gain we’ve made throug the night, plot and watch the position of the other boats and have some late breakfast before those feeling the most dizzy will head to bed again. By lunch around 1 or 2 pm we all meet to usually enjoy the most exiting meal of the day: BACON! New weather forecasts are being downloaded and revised at the toilet next to Saturday in the front shortly after. The plan is put into action, we have dinner and occasionally we try to get some fresh fish in the evening – before it all starts over again. So far there seems to be no fish in the Pacific Ocean, except the flying fish God must have created on day 3 before he put on the lights – ’cause they look weird!

As we are approaching the Hawaiian Islands (tomorrow evening!), we thought it would be interesting to share som knowledge about the place. Remember we don’t have access to internet, and hence the information may not be 100% accurate as the resources are typically Wikieirika and our great captain who says he knows it all. Hawaii consists of many islands, we don’t know the exact number, but you should know that we are not going to the island called Hawaii. We are heading for the island of Oahu and the capital Honolulu. Approximately 4 million people live on these islands, so about 2 million coconuts have suffered their lifes to become bikinis – assuming 50% of the population are women. Only 15 different bird species are present on the Azore Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, but we believe more species are living here. We doubt they have monkeys and wolf-dogs as they are specifically listed to be prohibited in the declaration forms by the customs. On the other hand they welcome us to the 50th state of the US, and tells us that many plants and animals, found nowhere else in the world, have evolved on these islands because of the isolation in the Pacific. I guess we can all agree that isolation not necessary has proven to be the best way when it somes to genetics and looks (just think of the old royal families in Europe) – so exciting times are coming also ashore!